P3229b-3256A Mrs Liza Harvey

Extract from Hansard [ASSEMBLY — Wednesday, 27 May 2020] p3229b-3256a Mrs Liza Harvey; Ms Libby Mettam; Mr Kyran O'Donnell; Mr Vincent Catania; Mr Dean Nalder; Dr David Honey; Mrs Alyssa Hayden; Mr Paul Papalia; Mr Roger Cook CORONAVIRUS — GOVERNMENT RESTRICTIONS Motion MRS L.M. HARVEY (Scarborough — Leader of the Opposition) [4.00 pm]: I move — That this house condemns the McGowan Labor government for its handling of the lifting of COVID-19 restrictions and causing unnecessary economic harm, small business closures and job losses. At the outset, I have no quarrel with the way this government, in conjunction with the national cabinet, has handled the health crisis around COVID-19. The way that the state Premiers and the Prime Minister have come together, along with all the health ministers, to put in place measures, a strategy and a response around managing the COVID-19 health crisis has been handled well. I want to be very clear and put that on the record. I believe the lockdown was necessary at the start, because we did not understand what we were dealing with, we did not understand quite how virulent COVID-19 would be and we needed a national stocktake of our health system, its capacity and what was going to be required should we have outbreaks of COVID-19. I am glad the Minister for Health is in the chamber to hear this. I think that the health response has been very good. We are now in a very good position in Western Australia and we have had hundreds of nurses trained to step up into intensive care units should we have an outbreak and require additional ICU beds to open. We have access to a stockpile of ventilators, we have a steady supply of personal protective equipment and we have a steady supply of the flu vaccine, which will help us to inoculate our vulnerable Western Australians against the potential prospect of having the flu and COVID-19 at the same time. The health response has been very good and the lockdown needed to occur to allow us to have that stocktake of the health system, to gear everything up and make sure that we properly respond to COVID-19 outbreaks as they occur. The reality of this is that until a vaccine or a cure is found for COVID-19, we are going to be living with it for a long time. I note that, as I understand it, the Spanish Flu vaccine took 15 years to develop. Coronaviruses are notorious for their rates of mutation, which makes the development of vaccines even more problematic, so we need to find a way to live with COVID-19 and address the jobs crisis we are facing in Western Australia. The opposition has been calling for the lifting of intrastate border restrictions for quite some time, and we do so in response to the regional tourism and hospitality businesses that are on their knees. We need to bear in mind that businesses in Western Australia were already doing it tough before the COVID-19 crisis. Because of the decline in growth, and, in fact, retraction of the domestic economy, many of our small businesses, particularly our retailers and some of our hospitality businesses, were suffering because of the decline in discretionary spend. If people do not have an extra $50 a week in their pocket, they will not spend it in retail, on dining experiences or on going out to pubs and hospitality venues; they have to spend it on their bills. The opposition was saying at the end of last year that the household fees and charges basket had increased by $850 per household, which was causing an issue with discretionary spend on retail and hospitality et cetera. Those were the circumstances the state was in before the COVID-19 crisis. A lot of those businesses had used up their cash reserves. They did not have cash reserves; they had used up all their loan facilities, options with credit cards and lines of credit with the bank—whatever it might have been they had to help them get through the difficult economic circumstances of 2019. They had used up all those options and they had no cash reserves, and now they are shut because they have no customers. Every day that our borders stay locked down, intrastate travel restrictions remain in place and these restrictions are placed on restaurant, cafes and hospitality venues, is another day that another business will have to close its doors forever. The sad reality, particularly in regional Western Australia, is that when a business closes, the likelihood of it reopening is remote. Buying a house or funding a business in regional WA is the most difficult prospect to get across to any bank manager. The banks do not like lending in regional Western Australia because the markets are quite lumpy. A lot of those towns rely on tourism and, as we know, until COVID-19, the tourism market in regional WA was internationally competitive, so Western Australians voted with their feet. If people had little discretionary spend, they would spend their holidays in places like Bali because it was cheaper. That had a significant impact on towns like Broome, Exmouth and Geraldton, and regions like the goldfields and even the south west. Those were the circumstances we were in prior to the lockdown. We now call on the government to ease these restrictions. I want to go back to the Premier’s position on this crisis. I take members back to Tuesday, 17 March 2020, when I asked a question of the Premier in this place. I asked — I note the recommendations from the tertiary hospitals medical leads advisory board. Will the Premier immediately support the recommendations of the health experts and doctors on the frontline of the coronavirus fight “by extending isolation restrictions to include all personal interstate travel”? [1] Extract from Hansard [ASSEMBLY — Wednesday, 27 May 2020] p3229b-3256a Mrs Liza Harvey; Ms Libby Mettam; Mr Kyran O'Donnell; Mr Vincent Catania; Mr Dean Nalder; Dr David Honey; Mrs Alyssa Hayden; Mr Paul Papalia; Mr Roger Cook Back on 17 March the tertiary hospitals medical leads advisory board had recommended to enforce self-isolation requirements on people travelling interstate. We asked the Premier at that time whether he supported that, and in response I got an absolute spray. I quote what the Premier said — I want to outline to the house the implications of closing the border with the eastern states. A range of Western Australians need to go east to obtain medical advice and medical attention and have operations and the like. It would impact the supply of important medicines and provisions for Western Australia. It would impact and stop the supply of important goods coming from the east, including a great deal of our fresh food. It would disrupt and stop the supply of Kleenex tissues and toilet paper to our supermarkets in Western Australia. It would severely disrupt the mining industry in Western Australia, a number of whose employees live in the east and come to the west … there would be severe implications for all Australians and all Western Australians were we to attempt such a measure. That was in response to the health advice at the time that was saying we should enforce — Mr P. Papalia: Who was giving that health advice that you are referring to? Mrs L.M. HARVEY: It was from the tertiary hospitals medical leads advisory board, which was recommending — Mr P. Papalia: Who is that? Mrs L.M. HARVEY: A lead of experts who run our tertiary hospitals. They had seen that there was — Mr P. Papalia: It wasn’t the Chief Health Officer. Mrs L.M. HARVEY: No, this was prior to that. The importance of that was that it was pretty serious medical advice saying that we should be putting self-quarantine restrictions on interstate travellers, and the Premier’s response was that it was unnecessary because it would completely wreck our economy. That is what he said, in effect, and he said it in the strongest of terms. In fact, he implied that I wanted to close down the entire country, which I did not imply. All I asked was whether we were going to enforce self-isolation requirements on interstate travellers. We now find ourselves in a position in which the Chief Medical Officer and the Deputy Chief Medical Officer in Canberra are saying that their expertise advice was never to shut down our borders and never to restrict travel within the states. That is what they are saying. They are saying that they did not recommend it. Mr P. Papalia: No, they did not, but that is a different authority. That is the federal authority looking at information. We look at our relevant health authority and we take our advice from our Chief Health Officer. Mrs L.M. HARVEY: I thank the Minister for Tourism so much for explaining the difference between the deputy and the Chief Medical Officer in Canberra and the Chief Health Officer in Australia. I am aware of the separation between the state and the commonwealth. The difference between those two health authorities and those two advisory groups is that the commonwealth advisory groups are taking the advice of all the state Chief Health Officers, and they are dealing with international authorities on these matters. That is why I think we should listen to their advice. In the early days, the Premier was reluctant to listen to that advice, but when the advice of the Chief Health Officer is contradictory to that of the Chief Medical Officer and the Deputy Chief Medical Officer in Canberra and differs from what the Premier wants, he chooses to take a different tack.

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